League boss seeks to re­tain post

PREMIER league chair­man, John Leuta, is seek­ing to re­tain his post dur­ing the Premier League Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee (PLMC) elec­tions to be held next Tues­day at Bam­batha Tšita Sports Arena.

The Bantu pres­i­dent as­sumed the chair­man­ship last year to re­place Li­oli boss Le­bo­hang Thotanyana who had been ap­pointed Min­is­ter of Min­ing.

Leuta told the Le­sotho Times this week the PLMC had asked him to con­test in the elec­tion to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the body’s re­form roadmap.

“I have been man­dated to stand for the elec­tions by the com­mit­tee to en­sure we con­tinue im­ple­ment­ing what has been laid down in our roadmap,” Leuta said.

“To be hon­est, it has not been an easy road since I took up the reins last year, but I think we have made a lot of progress.

“The big­gest chal­lenge we face is that our football is in a tran­si­tion phase, and we are work­ing to­wards pro­fes­sion­al­is­ing our league which is a mam­moth task.”

The premier league boss said he hoped all the cur­rent PLMC mem­bers would re­tain their po­si­tions to fin­ish the task at hand.

“In my ideal sce­nario, all the PLMC mem­bers would re­tain their po­si­tions for them to con­tinue and fin­ish what they started,” said Leuta.

“We re­cently toured Botswana to as­sess how their league con­tin­ues to progress and we learnt a lot. We have since made rec­om­men­da­tions to the Le­sotho Football As­so­ci­a­tion on the changes we feel need to be made to take our league to an­other level.”

He said the com­mit­tee en­gaged the premier league’s spon­sors to lobby for more in­vest­ment.

“We have de­vel­oped a good re­la­tion­ship with spon­sors and are in the mid­dle of ne­go­ti­a­tions for in­creas­ing spon­sor­ship in all our com­pe­ti­tions,” the premier league boss said.

“That’s why I feel it would be ideal if the cur­rent com­mit­tee were to be given a chance to fin­ish what they started. Most of the spon­sors are happy the pre­sen­ta­tions we made to them in re­cent months.”

He added: “I think there is a light at the end of the tun­nel in terms of spon­sor­ship. We will not rest un­til our league has im­proved and spon­sor­ships grows.”

Dur­ing the elec­tions, the PLMC is also ex­pected to fill the vicechair­per­son po­si­tion left by Leuta when he took over from Thotanyana.